This weekend’s New York Times article about Park Geun-hye (pictured above, standing next to the guy whose dad tried to kill hers), the conservative politician most likely to become South Korea’s next president, reminds me of the many offspring of dictators who go on to make names and careers for themselves, as politicians or otherwise. Park is the daughter of the 1960s-‘70s dictator Park Chung-hee, who had an abysmal human rights record but is also fondly remembered for overseeing South Korea’s economic development. The younger Park, who served as her father’s first lady after the death of her mother in a botched assassination attempt in 1974, is able to reap the benefits of her father’s name among older and conservative voters that have fond memories of the era. For her part, Park has criticized the human rights abuses of her father’s regime.

So who are some other spawn of dictators who have established political careers?Alessandro Mussolini is one of the busier autocratic offspring. Granddaughter of Benito, Alessandro came onto the scene in 1982 as a Eurotrash pop singer, did some modeling in the Italian Playboy, and then she naturally parlay this career into one as a member of the European Parliament (see Weird IR’s Feb 22). Now Mussolini is a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies as a right-wing representative of Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party. High-five! Oh, wait, that's not what she's doing.

While I can see how older conservatives in South Korea might look back fondly on the Park regime – after all, they weren’t on the front lines of the democracy movement, sacrificing careers and lives and more – I can’t see how anyone could vote for a Mussolini.

Another autocratic spawn-turn-wannabe politician is Augusto’s Pinochet’s daughter, Lucia. After being charged for embezzlement in relation to hiding her father’s ill-gotten fortune along in 2007, Lucia was elected in a right-wing district as a councilwoman in 2008. It has been officially calculated that her father was responsible for 3,065 deaths, with 40,018 victims of human rights abuses in total.

Not all dictators’ children and grandchildren go on to become far right-wing politicians though. Some try to build their own careers, which may still involve trading in on their family’s notoriety.

That cute little scamp caught in Stalin’s headlock is his daughter, Svetlana, who had a pretty full life. She fell in love with a famous Soviet director at 16 (he was sent to a gulag) and an Indian communist while in her 30s, whereupon she moved to New Delhi. That move helped her to defect to the US, where she worked as a writer and lecturer while living in Princeton, married one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s colleagues, moved back to the USSR and then back to the US, where she died last year in 2011.

The brutal Spanish dictator Franco’s daughter and her children take the cake however. Carmen Franco (pictured at the left) married into the Spanish aristocracy, and Carmen’s daughter married a certain Duke of Anjou, claimant to the long-defunct French throne. So now Generalissimo Franco’s great-grandson is the current claimant to the French throne, should the French ever want him. Good luck with that.

The poorest bastard (literally) out of all these devil’s spawn however, must be Hitler's secret son, Jean-Marie Loret, a love child from a relationship with a poor French farm girl during WWI. Loret, who died in 1985, had claimed to be Hitler’s only son based on his mother’s confession before she died, even writing a book about it called “Your Father's Name Was Hitler” in 1981. Recent evidence came out earlier this year giving credence to his claims. How did his life turn out?...the pic below probably says it all. He could have shaved the mustache.

The New York Times broke a story last night that reeks of diplomatic oddity. On February 6, a local politician named Wang Lijun entered the American consulate in Changdu, China. Why? He was being chased by policemen loyal to his former mentor and current rival politician, Bo Xilai. Bo has become internationally infamous as of late, since he's accused of massive corruption and his wife is being investigated for the murder of a British national who broke the story of Bo's malfeasance.

As long as Wang remained in the consulate, he was safely beyond the reach of Chinese sovereignty. The U.S. Consul-General, Peter Haymond, had to make a decision while the Chinese police laid in wait outside. Should he protect Wang or send him back on the streets, where he would surely be doomed?

According to the Times's report, it seems that Wang traded some sensitive information on Bo in exchange for temporary protection. Haymond arranged for special police from Bejing to come to the consulate and escort him to the capital, where he presumably levied his accusations against Bo.

The whole thing reminds me of the embassy scene from The Bourne Identity and the even less plausible scene in Quantum of Solace. But, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. People of a certain age remember Operation Just Cause, the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama. Its primary goals were to restore order in the country and apprehend General Manuel Noriega, who was in the drug biz when he wasn't fighting Sandanistas and other commies.

Shortly after the US invasion, he fled to the Vatican Embassy and asked for refuge. The Vatican ambassador obliged, but he wasn't a gracious host. Shortly after Noriega arrived, he realized that he made a mistake. So, he threatened to move his staff to a nearby high school, leave Noriega where he was, and then declare the high school the new embassy. Even though the standoff between US forces and Noriega lasted almost two weeks, it never came to such drastic measures. The US army drove Noriega out peacefully, mostly by messing with his head. They blasted music from a specially equipped Humvee and shone floodlights on the facility 24/7 so that the Panamanian couldn't sleep or get a moment of peace. It worked and Noriega surrendered without a shot being fired.

This is one of those stories that gets passed around a lot among USFP people. It seems that everyone agrees on the basics, but there are different versions of the army's playlist. I've heard that they played the Clash's "I Fought the Law," Van Halen's "Panama," B-52's "Love Shack," and Guns and Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle."

What songs would you play if you had to oust a nefarious world leader who was seeking refuge in an embassy? This is my choice.

We hear a lot in the U.S. media about "Chinese netizens" without necessarily getting to hear or read about what these masses actually discuss (unless of course you happen to read Chinese and frequently peruse weibo.com).

Well, if you're really interested, the website chinaSMACK.com makes life much easier. The editors at chinaSMACK select popular stories drawing attention in among Chinese netizens, and then they select and translate into English comments left by readers of these stories that they feel are "popular, representative, or interesting."

Many Chinese netizens marveled at the patience of the Japanese in the wake of the disaster, as they lined up and waited indefinitely at train stations, emergency evacuation zones, and at stores for basic necessities. Many wondered what the response would be like in China.

I have to say, Japanese patience might have more soft power value than their anime characters....

Japan watchers have been aware of this story for a few years now but it's worth repeating here for the purposes of completeness in cataloging the world's weird stories of IR. In 2009, in an attempt to boil down its soft power into three archetypal character types, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs deputized three part-time models to the official positions of Kawaii (cute) Ambassadors. The three characters are Schoolgirl, Gyaru (gal) girl, and Lolita, played by Shizuka Fujioka, Yu Kimura, and Misako Aoki. Where's the ever-popular samurai character, you may ask? Soft power describes how a nation might use its popular cultural and appealing, well-functioning institutions of governance to gain favor and better relations with others. Samurai represent Japan's violent past, and would thus be counterproductive to Japan's attempt to display its softer side to its East Asian neighbors.

The Lolita Ambassador, widely thought to be the most experienced diplomat among the three, was immediately sent to Moscow to for talks with a group of Russian Lolitas.

Just as discussion turned to the delicate issue of the return of the Kurile Islands however, the talks were broken up by a group of hardliner Gothic Lolitas, who demanded pictures be taken immediately.

Does soft power work? It's an appealing idea, and students love to discuss this in class. But I've challenged students over the last few years to come up with a research design that could test the concept, with no takers yet. While pop culture can appeal to (subcultures of) youth of other nations, it probably does not translate very well into changes toward pro-Japan policies. Meanwhile, Japan's often dysfunctional institutions of governance are likely to have zero appeal for other nations. What does work well in promoting good relations, on the other hand, is something Japan has been good at for a long time: official developmental assistance, i.e. monetary aid.